Lily does not "belong" to the zoo or to any human organization. She
belongs to her mother.

The Oregon Zoo has agreed to pay $400,000 to an elephant trafficking
company in order to keep baby elephant Lily at the zoo.

Shortly after she was born, three months ago, we learned that Lily is
legally the property of the infamous Have Trunk Will Travel, a company that
rents out elephants to entertainment companies for shows, movies and rides.
Have Trunk had loaned one of its elephants, Tusko, to the Oregon Zoo in
exchange for ownership rights to the second (Lily), fourth and sixth babies
who would be born to Tusko and Rose-Tu, with whom he was mated.

Have Trunk, therefore, had the legal right to take Lily away when she was
just 30 days old. And videos of how the company treats its elephant
"properties" left people who saw them in complete shock.

Oregon Zoo director Kim Smith tried to reassure her constituents that
Have Trunk was not going to call the zoo on its contract and take Lily away.
Have Trunk also said they planned to leave Lily at the zoo:

Have Trunk Will Travel has no intention and has never
had any intention of coming to take Rose-Tu's calf. Have Trunk Will Travel
supports Oregon Zoo's vision for elephants and has great appreciation for
the way they care for elephants. We are very proud of the significant
contribution we have made together for Asian elephants. We could not be more
excited about the birth of this new calf.

“The reality is, Have Trunk Will Travel is in business to put elephants
in the circus and in movies," he told the Daily Beast. "And they had the
legal right, according to the contract. We were very concerned about the
possibility that a year or two down the road they could take Lily and put
her in the circus. You can’t get a baby elephant in the wild anymore, and
you can’t train an adult elephant to do circus tricks.”

Lily does not "belong" to the zoo or to any human organization. She
belongs to her mother.

The zoo must have not trusted Have Trunk either. It just paid the company
$400,000 in exchange for ownership rights to Lily. Zoo director Smith says
that this was primarily to "reassure the community that these animals were
not going to leave our care."

But $400,000 is an awful lot of money to pay for something that you
apparently know for sure is never going to happen.

And if Have Trunk wasn't lying in its statement, all they had to do was
void the contract altogether. The fact that they weren't prepared to do that
tells us everything we need to know about the true plan.

Lily is certainly safer at the zoo. But the zoo is not a hero in this
story. Lily does not "belong" to the zoo or to any human organization. She
belongs to her mother.
In her homeland, she would have grown up in a large, extended, close-knit
family that included not only her mother, but aunts and uncles, brothers and
sisters and cousins, and her grandmother, who would perhaps have been the
matriarch of the family, guiding the younger mothers in the care of their
young as she was once guided by her own mother.

All of that is lost in captivity, and regardless of what any zoo or
anyone else in the entertainment industry tells you, nothing can ever
replace it.

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